A Multi-ethnic City in Transition: Vilnius's Stormy Decade, 1939-1949

An American historian traces major changes in the demographic character of Vilnius during 1939-1949, a period encompassing the dislocation of its population and destruction during World War II as well as the city's ethnic and physical transformation prompted by incorporation into the USSR. More specifically, the paper, based in part on archival material, details and contrasts the circumstances prevailing during several distinctive periods in the city's mid-20th century history (September 1939-June 1941, June 1941-July 1944, and July 1944-1949), when it was exposed to five successive state jurisdictions (Poland, Lithuania, twice USSR, and Nazi Germany) and became the new Soviet capital of Lithuania. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R14. 1 figure, 89 references.     

Anglo-Irish Relations, 1939-41: A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy and Military Restraint

‘This study bridges two gaps, one in the historiographyof Anglo-Irish relations between 1939 and 1941 and the otherin International Relations (IR) theory. Anglo-Irish relationsduring the Second World War have been the subject of numerousstudies focusing upon the bilateral nature of that relationship,but it was subject to serious multilateral considerations—theCommonwealth and the US. At moments of danger between the twostates, it was not the balance of a bilateral relationship,but rather of a broad multilateral structure which set the paceof British policy-making. This restrained British military planningagainst Eire. The history of Anglo-Irish relations in this periodpositively links the conduct of multilateral diplomacy withthe absence of the use of force. From the standpoint of IR theory,this provides a useful ‘hard’ case for how/why multilateralismmay matter. It also illustrates several of the deficienciesin IR theory, not least the Whiggish assumption that integrationor globalization follow a linear progression (against whichstands the equally Whiggish notion that interstate relationsare eternally cast). This article seeks to demonstrate thata somewhat wider appreciation of history makes it possible toreconcile multilateral diplomacy with many more traditional‘realist’ concerns.’     

A passage from India: Geographies and experiences of repatriation, 1858-1939

This paper examines both the imagined and material geographies of return experienced by the imperial elite as they returned from India. Focusing on Cheltenham and Bedford, I explore how the 'aristocratic' lifestyles of earlier repatriates became increasingly difficult to sustain over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although imaginatively constructed notions of return continued to imply that an upper middle-class standard of living remained attainable for those returning 'home', the majority found that they had to settle in (lower) middle-class suburban locations. In considering such changes I am also able to examine the ways in which geographies and experiences of return were influenced by a specifically imperial identity over a period of imperial decline.     

港口、铁路与近代青岛城市变动:1898-1937

19世纪末20世纪初,随着近代中国社会与经济的现代转型,铁路、轮船等新型交通运输方式应运而生,一批新兴交通型城市逐渐形成,青岛便是其中之一。作为青岛港所在地和胶济铁路起点,青岛市在1898至1937年间的变动与港路休戚相关:港路运输体系的构建,极大改善了当地的交通运输条件,使青岛成为陆上交通枢纽并跃居山东省沿海第一大港;凭借路港联动,物流与人流均以前所未有的速度和规模在内陆—青岛—海外地区间流动,带动了青岛工商经济的飞速发展,也为青岛集聚了人气,大批务工、经商人员移居青岛,青岛市人口规模增大,街市不断扩展。在青岛港和胶济铁路的作用下,青岛完成了由小渔村到现代化城市的嬗变,并由此带动了山东省乃至近代华北地区交通和经济格局的变动。     

Institutional Transplantation: The Chinese Lawyers in Republican Shanghai,1912-1937

Sun Huei-min's book is the latest among a number of scholarly works on the role of the legal profession in Republican China.While some of the issues addressed in this book were covered in those other works,the author has provided more details and introduced new issues,partly through primary sources that were not taken up earlier.Alison Connor's works ("Legal Education during the Republican Period:Soochow University Law School," Republican China 19,no.1 (1993):84-112;"Lawyers and the Legal Profession During the Republican Period," in Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip Huang,eds.,Civil Law in Qing and Republican China.Stanford:Stanford University Press,1994),for instance,did not use the Shanghai Bar Association (SBA)'s annual reports,while Xiaoqun Xu's works ("The Fate of Judicial Independence in Republican China,1912-1937," China Quarterly,no.149 (1997):1-28;Chinese Professionals and the Republican State:The Rise of Professional Associations in Shanghai,1912-1937,New York:Cambridge University Press,2001) did use the SBA's annual reports but not the SBA's archives.     

'Feeding A Pauper Army'. War Refugees and Welfare in Britain, 1939-42

An examination of British response to the prospect of refugeesfrom the Low Countries reveals that there was almost no appreciationof their positive potential contribution, either economically,militarily or in terms of propaganda, to the British war effort.On the contrary, the immediate reaction was that they wouldconstitute an enormous social burden. Above all, there was thefear that the ordinary British public were unlikely to respondvery positively to hordes of foreign paupers arriving on theirdoorsteps. The result was a number of intractable planning dilemmasand uneasy compromises, of which the decision to send a largeproportion of the refugees to London, and thus straight intothe path of the Luftwaffe's ferocious bombing campaign, wasthe most outstanding example. At root was an almost obsessiveconcern to avoid giving the impression that refugees were entitledto ‘special’ treatment beyond that accorded to Britishpeople. It was equally evident in the assistance, billeting,and evacuation policies which were subsequently pursued. Thefact that few Allied refugees, in the event, were able to reachthe UK was more than offset by the cause: the shocking collapseof the Allied armies amid accusations of military ineptitude,cowardice and treachery.     

从美英报刊视角看中国抗战——以《时与潮》时论译文为中心的考察(1937-1939)

全面抗战初期,美英媒体及其观察人士对中国将取得抗战胜利的前途做出强烈的预判.其时,正值中国在反抗日本侵略的斗争中,于政治、经济、军事、社会结构乃至社会思想上发生重大转变的时期.考察这一与其时中日战况相反的舆情及其深层原因,不仅有助于客观地了解抗战中国自身的重大变化,亦可通过第三方视角深入认识其与世界反法西斯战争的内在关联.     

Bad blood: poverty, psychopathy and the politics of transgression in Kenya Colony, 1939-59

This article examines the inter-relationship between psychiatry and sex, both fertile fields within the recent historiography of colonialism and empire. Using a series of case files pertaining to European patients admitted to the Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi during the 1940s and 1950s, this article shows how sexual transgression among colonial Europeans precipitated, and was combined with, mental distress. Considering psychiatric treatment as a form of social control, the article investigates a number of cases in which a European patient had been perceived to have transgressed the normative sexual behaviour codes of settler society in Kenya. What these files suggest is that transgressive sexuality in Kenya was itself framed by indices, as insistent as they were uncertain, of gender, race and class. While psychiatry as social control has some degree of purchase here, more valuable is an attempt to discern the particular ways in which certain forms of sexual behaviour were understood in diagnostic terms. Men who had sex with Africans, we see, tended to be diagnosed as 'depressed' on arrival at the hospital but were judged to be mentally normal consequently. Women, by contrast, were liable to be diagnosed as psychopathic, a diagnosis, I argue, that helped to explain the uniquely transgressive status of impoverished European women living alone in the margins of white society. Unlike white men, moreover, women did not have to have sex with non-Europeans to transgress sexual codes: this is because female poverty was a sexual problem in a way that male poverty decidedly was not. Poor white women were marked by uncertainty over their sexual behaviour—and dubious racial identity in its turn—and the problem of social contamination was described by reference both to the polluted racial ancestry of an individual and to the prospective contamination of healthy racial stocks. This article aims to address current historical debates around sex and empire, 'white subalternity' and the social history of psychiatry and mental health. All names have been changed to protect patient anonymity.     

Alsace-Lorraine/Elsaß-Lothringen: destruction, revival and reconstruction in contested territory, 1939-1960

Alsace-Lorraine passed from French administration to German control for half a century after 1871, and again for the duration of World War II. Widespread material damage was inflicted in this contested territory in both world wars. The first wave of destruction in 1940 was inflicted by German forces, the second was caused by Allied bombers in 1944, and the final wave surrounded bitter fighting between German occupiers and American liberators in 1944-1945. Using archival sources and published accounts, this article examines the complex impact of destruction, very different in chronology from the more familiar story in Lower Normandy; the desperate challenge of coping with a wide range of emergencies that faced the reinstated French regime in the early years of peace; and the prolonged process of definitive reconstruction, which combined respect for traditional design with modern building techniques in some locations, such as the viticultural villages near Colmar, whilst adopting entirely modern approaches in other parts of Alsace-Lorraine.     

Zarrow,Peter.Educating China: Knowledge,Society, and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902-1937

For students,textbooks are boring and tedious.They read them to keep up their grades and memorize them to pass examinations.But for Peter Zarrow—the author of the well-acclaimed books China in War and Revolution and After Empire—textbooks are valuable sources through which to examine the socio-political changes in early twentieth-century China.In his new book,Educating China,Zarrow demonstrates that as China was building a nation-state to replace its imperial system,textbooks played an important role in producing civic-minded citizens.In textbooks,he contends,we find intense debates about the concept of the Chinese nation.     

马克思主义史学研究的海外视角——评《革命与历史：马克思主义历史学的起源1919—1937》

当前中国史研究的各个领域都受到海外学者的强力诱导,但马克思主义史学领域是一个例外。其实,从事此方面研究的西方学者并不乏人,费文恺、史华兹、哈里森、刘广京等皆其代表。海外关于中国马克思主义史学的研究也曾一度兴盛。然而,这些成果译介引进到国内的却寥若星辰。美国学者阿里夫·德里克的《革命与历史:马克思主义历史学的起源1919—1937》①一书在中国大陆的面世是一件值得注意的事。德里克是一位在中国马克思主义史学史领域研究有素的学者。他的研究集中于中国早期马克思主义思想与中国史学。1980年伊格尔斯领衔主编的《历史研究国…     

"A sudden and terrible revelation": motherhood and infant mortality in France, 1858-1874

In 1874, legislators in France passed a law regulating the wet-nursing industry. Citing recent medical research into the causes and social costs of high infant mortality, the law's supporters met little opposition, despite the fact that the law challenged the tradition of paternal authority and familial autonomy that had been inscribed in French law since the promulgation of the Civil Code of 1804. Extending state power into the familial realm required a concerted effort by reformers, who concentrated on two issues: maternal responsibility for newborn infants and the social costs of early death. Because working women in urban areas used wet-nurses to preserve their wage-earning capacity, reformers capitalized on widespread opposition to women's labor outside the home. The law met little opposition in part because the issues of paternal authority had already been thoroughly debated several months earlier in the child labor law of 1874.